“It wasn’t really just about design,” an architect named Mattew Miller tells us toward the end of “If You Build It,” a slavish chronicle of a student workshop that blossoms into a community construction project. In Patrick Creadon’s lackluster documentary of an impressive endeavor, Mr. Miller and Emily Pilloton apply their skills in design and architecture to grooming a class of open-minded teenagers in rural North Carolina for making bigger, better things.

Those two teachers, who are also a couple, get a lot done in the course of their bold monthslong initiative, called “Studio H,” and go without a proper salary. The teenagers take to making models of chicken coops and eventually to building a new farmers’ market for their county, once flooded and still-beleaguered. Despite roadblocks, the white-knight aspect to this community organizing effort goes underexamined and is reinforced by a little too much praise (and too little heard from opposing voices).

But the movie’s biggest weakness comes with its tendency to film people telling us what’s going on rather than having us observe — a habit foreshadowed by an early glimpse of a TED Talk. Mr. Creadon and his editors don’t find a consistent editing rhythm for weaving together their to-the-camera updates, classroom activity (which unfolds in its own building) and extracurricular color, either. Not that Mr. Miller, Ms. Pilloton and their budding brainstormers don’t deserve it, but the film’s style ultimately makes this feel more like a firm pat on the back than a richly conveyed experience.